xps to Euler: see I don't like the idea of denigrating "the liberal arts" as a thing, I legitimately believe that the liberal arts (including liberal study of the sciences) are the foundation of a democratic society; this is why high school is at least in part a weird mini liberal arts education. College as a job-training-and-credentialing exercise is just going to become a worse and worse value proposition (though it honestly isn't now, as college grads are still outperforming non-college-grads in the job market, modulo debt I guess), especially because the academy moves so slowly that by the time it has figured out how to prepare students for the economy of 2011 it'll be 2038.

yeah I would like to see more discussion of the value of a liberal arts education itt. think a lot of ppl (though not all) who post to ILX prob have a degree in the liberal arts and went to liberal arts colleges?

the stuff I learned in my hs journalism class - particularly how to write, use a computer, and lay things out - came in much handier professionally than anything I learned in college, really. but liberal arts degrees/colleges are not really about learning a specific subject matter imho, they're about training your mind to think critically and work in different contexts.

I would definitely be making more money in the same industry I'm in now if I'd gotten an engineering degree, but I always hated math.

I think that the american liberal arts education actually contributes substantial economic value to this country - overall we had a much more adaptable job market in the late 20th century than most of the world. more engineers would be good too, but an economy can't be 50% engineers (and really would anyone want to live in a dystopia like that?) most contemporary jobs don't require specific training and in better economic times can be learned on-the-job.

said it in the other thread but the bigger problems are:a. jobs! (I know underemployed engineers from good schools!)b. cost

The public university at which I work has increased tuition and enrollment geometrically in the last two years to compensate for evaporating state funding, with no commensurate strengthening of infrastructure.

The quality of students haven't changed much except I'm seeing more examples of mediocrities: girls getting psych degrees as a time killer before marriage because their parents press on them the importance of a college education, guys getting business degrees because, well, they want to start their own franchises, and journalism majors who don't realize how useless that degree is and always was.

working nights did not come in handy today. someone called me about an hour into my sleep (10? 11am?) and I gave off the just the most generic dozed pitch, can't even remember what company they were calling from.

"school is awful - full of false promises and useless workmemorization and paper achievementsany kind of real sense of desires to learn or create are put to the side"

i really view this as a positive when applied to the evil ambitions of... a lot of people frankly. what other civilizing institutions do we have other than compulsory education? I agree with Thiel in the sense that a lot of motivated people would be personally, selfishly better off not pursuing advanced degrees and doing startups straight from high school, but I disagree that it's a net positive for society.

btw just so you guys know -- the hammer is coming down on higher ed w/r/t assessment and accountability for their claims. the HLC has issued a whole new system of criteria for accreditation that is designed to force institutions to account for how their time and money is being spent.

Critiques of my teaching and debate team coaching, often made through backchannels and delivered to me secondhand or not at all, centered on my easygoing personal style (He doesn't use the title "doctor!" He teaches in T-shirts!), my effusive student evaluations (If he's pleasing them, he must be doing something wrong!), and my relatively calm demeanor (If a young academic doesn't seem stressed beyond capacity, he's not working hard enough!).

Mission creep is driven by student demand (the terrible reality that America has no use for non-degreed workers any more)

This isn't necessarily true. Iirc, college enrolment has declined for three consecutive years and isn't predicted to grow again until 2017 at the earliest. The next ten years of growth are predicted to be relatively modest. When the economy is reasonably robust, a lot of people go straight into employment. The big growth years tend to coincide with recessions. For-profit colleges have been the worst hit due to a (necessary) increase in regulatory scrutiny and questions over vfm.

The economic analysis in that article sounds pretty questionable in places.

Also, the word "loan" is conspicuously absent from the article although it's probably the main driver of college cost. Veblen good or no, a 120k "discount" price would appeal to far fewer status chasers if there weren't a virtually bottomless well of credit available with few of the limitations affecting other forms of credit.